It is an obvious and accepted fact that in our nation, for instance, there has been signal and widespread advancement educationally, socially and economically and the advantages thereof have been and are made available, more or less, to all and sundry. Albeit sin continues to abound conspicuously in the actual conduct and practice of all classes as in Isaiah’s day, when Israel was from the sole of the foot even unto the head without moral soundness. The disregard of the doctrine of the Word of God by the most civilised brings forth its inevitable and disastrous consequences. Not only does sin abound inordinately, but also it ceases to be recognised and known as to its real nature and character. Good is called evil and evil good.
We deem it no exaggeration to aver that a great measure of responsibility for such a state of affairs lies upon hundreds, if not thousands, of professed ministers of the gospel throughout our land. The plain, solemn, stern facts regarding sin as set forth in the Holy Scriptures have been withheld from the people or “watered down” in the preaching and teaching in churches. On one occasion, which remained in our memory, we heard a minister who professed to be an out and out evangelical pray in the open air at a funeral. The prayer was by any standards quite a long one. Yet there was not one expression in it which even hinted at the fact of man’s sin. Then again the ungodly and the profane are buried with much ceremonial and the generality of the people hear from clergymen continually that such persons are God’s servants and that they are laid in the grave with the hope of a glorious resurrection, which statements many a time must be nauseating and absurd even to some worldly persons. But this conduct and these false statements work like an evil leaven in the minds of young and old and powerfully and subtly deaden the consciences of such to the reality and nature of sin and God’s mind in regard to it. And so there had disappeared largely in these times any proper understanding of, or interest in, the truth regarding sin. This is indeed a moral calamity and a heavy judgment upon people in general. Truly, the wicked walk on every side.
Sin has to do with the great God of heaven, our Creator, Sustainer and Lawgiver and is committed against Him. As David confessed, “Against thee, thee only, have I sinned.” But this tremendous fact is relegated to the background when sin itself is minimised and trifled with in Church and State and throughout the nation. Low and base views of God and His majesty and glory are engendered in the minds of men, and atheism and paganism are encouraged when men can sin with a complete absence of any sense of having done that which is morally and basically wrong. We refer here not merely to the unconverted sinner as such and his natural ignorance, but to such being uninformed or deceived by lack of teaching or example from those in authority in Church and State and in the homes of our nation. Erroneous doctrine and teaching, to which we referred already, has always been and is now a mighty instrument in the hand of Satan to lead young and old to practice all ungodliness and sin without fear of God or man as is the case today.
The holy, just and good law of God, the moral law, expresses the righteous claims of God upon the children of men, and that we love Him with all our heart and our neighbour as ourselves. But man is at heart totally ruined by sin and under the power of sin so that he cannot fulfil the law of God but breaks and violates it daily in thought, word and deed. Man lives in a manner which the divine law prohibits, and on the other hand fails utterly to live as the law requires. In cases there may be a measure of outward and superficial compliance with the requirements of the law of God by unconverted persons which, when general, is for the external benefit of society. But bold and open violations of the divine law are rife and widespread in these times, and “sin is the transgression of the law,” the law being God’s law. Thus for men to treat lightly and fail to face adequately the fact of sin involves them in a trifling with the truth regarding God and the revealed character of God with whom we have to do. He says: “The soul that sinneth, it shall die.”
Men cannot preach consistently with the Word of God regarding the redeeming work of the Son of God by the sacrifice of Himself, without clear views of the fact of man’s sin. To preach Christ to a people flattered and deceived and left in ignorance regarding the terrible reality of their sin is unspeakably greater folly than bringing a physician to such as are in perfect health. “They that are whole have no need of a physician.” And again, the remarkable declaration of Jesus, “Ye must be born again,” cannot but call for the consideration of the sinful and morally corrupt nature of man, under the reigning power of which no man of our race can see or enter the Kingdom of God in this world or ultimately in heaven. Men must be born of water and of the Spirit, must be regenerated, must be made living believers upon Christ crucified, lifted up in the gospel, must be made holy and must be delivered from sin, to enter the holy habitation of glory in the eternal world.
Thus the scriptural teaching regarding sin must have its own and proper place in the preaching and doctrine of all who will preach the whole counsel of God and the gospel of salvation to their fellow men. For men ignorant of their personal sins will never turn to the precious Saviour; but will continue down the broad way to everlasting destruction in hell. Surely the Holy Spirit is He who convinces men of sin; but it is by means of the truth of God setting forth the reality and nature of man’s sin that He does so; as it is also through and by the truth that the Spirit reveals Christ savingly to souls as the precious Redeemer of lost sinners.
The apostle Paul declared that he kept back nothing that was profitable to his hearers. The Church of Christ has a great and constant responsibility lying upon her to follow in the footsteps of Paul in the above aspect of the discharge of her duty and the declaration of her testimony, as before the Lord Jesus Christ, the alone Head of the Church, and toward sinners and saints. “Cry aloud, spare not, lift up thy voice like a trumpet, and shew my people their transgression, and the house of Jacob their sins” (Isaiah lviii: 1).